Places

Built in 1891, the Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion church represented a place of worship and a cornerstone of Auburn’s Black community. Harriet Tubman, a prominent member of this community, worshipped at this church alongside her family. The church became Tubman’s final resting place when she passed away in 1913. Registered as a National Historic Landmark in 1974, the church building was purchased by the National Park Service in 2017.

Gerrit Smith played a critical role in New York’s abolition movement. Today, the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark is listed as a site on the Network to Freedom. The site’s seven acres have exterior exhibits on the Smiths, Black Americans, and the Underground Railroad with four Estate buildings remaining intact.

Harriet Tubman’s developmental years were spent along the Eastern Shore and her first acts of resistance occurred in Church Creek, Maryland. The Harriet Tubman Visitor Center is set against Church Creek’s coastal and marshy environment with two second story, front gable buildings that house a permanent exhibit that describes Tubman’s legacy and other exhibits that focus on Underground Railroad experiences from a regional perspective.

In addition to hosting live entertainment, the Smith Opera House played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement. The venue hosted several suffrage icons during the 29th Annual Convention of the New York State Women Suffrage Association, including Susan B. Anthony, Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, and Harriet Tubman. In 1911, Tubman is listed on the Smith Opera House’s “List of Life Members.”

Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park and sculpture commemorate the trust and friendship between Quaker, Thomas Garrett, and Harriet Tubman during their most critical collaborations from about 1854 through 1860.

Freedom seekers sought independence in Cape May, New Jersey after encountering dangerous waters on the Delaware Bay. The Beach Boardwalk allows visitors to observe and reflect on then pro-slavery states Virginia and Delaware, the anti-slavery state of New Jersey, and the struggle for equality.

The Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence served as a center for Underground Railroad activity in Albany, New York. The Albany Vigilance Committee, an abolitionist organization dedicated to helping freedom seekers, met at the home of powerful Black Abolitionists Stephen and Harriet Myers throughout the 1850s. Furthermore, they Myers used their home as a place to shelter individuals on the Underground Railroad.

At the age of 74, Tubman purchased at auction a 25 acre parcel of land with numerous structures which abutted her residential property. Her hope was to establish the Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Negroes to carry on her work, after she was gone, of caring for the old and poor in her community. When she was unable to raise funds necessary to open the facility, Tubman deeded the property to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

The Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center is an experiential museum that reveals authentic stories of Underground Railroad freedom seekers and abolitionists in Niagara Falls and inspires visitors to recognize modern injustices that stem from slavery and take action toward an equitable society.

Harriet Tubman bought a 7-acre area of land in of 1859 in Auburn, New York. There was a barn and a farmhouse, where Harriet Tubman would move her family from St. Catharines, Canada, south to Auburn, New York. In 1880, a fire destroyed the original wood-frame house after a resident under Harriet’s care used a defective stovepipe as a chimney in their room. Harriet Tubman and her family constructed a new brick house in 1882 and lived in that building until her passing in 1913.